1. The present invention relates to an electrical signal element that requires very little physical space and dissipates very little energy. More particularly, the present invention relates to a semiconductor functional element using a quantum interference effect.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, in semiconductor integrated circuit devices, a required logic circuit or a functional unit is composed of a combination of plural transistors whose fundamental gate characteristics are previously known.
In conventional semiconductor integrated circuit devices, there are three major problems as follows.
(1) There is no way to advance the degree of integration of semiconductor integrated circuits except to decrease the size of each transistor included in the circuit, thereby causing a problem in that the limits of technology are reached or a physical barrier results from a large amount of heat due to large scale integration.
(2) A large number of transistors are required depending on the complexity of the design, in order to construct a complicated functional unit, since the gate characteristics of each transistor are simple. The usage of many transistors in the unit reduces the working speed of the unit even though the switching speed of each transistor itself is fast.
(3) The response characteristics of the transistors against changes in external input signals are uniform thus making circuit design using the transistors convenient for circuit designers. On the other hand, these characteristics of the transistors constitute a disadvantage when constructing a neural network requiring complicated responses to changes in external input signal.